Mystifying Republican Appeasement

Why on earth are the Republicans agreeing to delay Alito's confirmation hearing until January? Once again, I can't help but think that since they do such a good job at acting as if they were a powerless minority, the voters may just accomodate them in the next election.

Investor's Business Daily has a good editorial on this point:

Dirt-Digging Delay

Posted 11/4/2005

Supreme Court: Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., announced that the confirmation process for Judge Samuel Alito will be the longest in more than 14 years. Advantage: mudslingers.

Former Pennsylvania Rep. Pat Toomey came within a hairsbreadth of beating incumbent Specter for the Republican nomination last year, and there was a big reason: fears that, as the new Judiciary chairman, the socially liberal senator would sabotage President Bush's promise to appoint justices in the mold of Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

Now the worries about Specter are coming true. In spite of the White House request to wrap up the Alito hearings before year's end, Specter has acceded to Democrats in setting a timetable that would stall the start of hearings until Jan. 9. A full vote would come on Jan. 20 at the earliest — more than 2 1/2 months after Alito's Oct. 31 nomination.

Specter's excuse is all that time is needed to forage through Alito's hundreds of rulings. "We have to do it right," he said.

But what's "right" about the longest process since Thomas' 1991 hearings? What, exactly, will senators be doing over the next two months — besides vacationing for the holidays — that's more meaningful than a Supreme Court nomination?

Specter's decision is only "right" for those who need dirt on Alito. Those who want the Supreme Court to be a superlegislature that thwarts the will of the people will have extra time to spend millions filling the airwaves with distortions of Alito's record. Groups on the left are already depicting Alito as racist, sexist, anti-employee and in favor of criminals being allowed to carry machine guns.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals nearly as long as Alito has been on the 3rd Circuit. What's more, she was general counsel for the extremist American Civil Liberties Union for seven years before that. She worked as a lawyer for radical feminist causes going back to the early 1960s.

That's a huge paper trail, but the Democrats in the Senate majority were not about to let the GOP spend extra time digging into her past. Ginsburg took her seat on the high court a mere seven weeks after she was nominated, and only three Republicans opposed her.

It's bad enough to see Republicans play dead when Democrats run the White House and Congress. With the GOP in control of both branches, Specter's act is inexcusable.